We know that we are dealing with a most serious and important matter

I found John Calvin’s comments on 1 Timothy 4:1-3 interesting. The passage in question reads: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and require abstinence [...]

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Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers

You need to listen to the Reformed Baptist pastor Albert Martin on the call to ministry. This is something we do not take seriously enough. After listening to Martin on this subject, I fear too many have been catapult into ministry. The fundamentalist bar is far too low. When we push unqualified men into ministry through [...]

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Garden love and garden joy, of Gods owne planting

In our day, there is little to no distinguishing of the differing movements of the inner man. It is considered unparallelled virtue that you be “passionate” about something. And so all the movements within a man are baptized as good and even necessary in the Christian life. We are expected to worship with wreckless abandon for [...]

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Baptists and the ordinances, part 2

This goal of this study (Part 1) has been to determine what an ordinance is, and how many there are, particularly for Baptists.
In the most general sense, an ordinance is a law, something whose observation is commanded. Following this broad definition, all the elements of public worship in the New Testament are ordinance. So, in a certain [...]

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Kevin Bauder preaching on the gospel

Kevin Bauder recently came to my home church to preach at our Bible Conference, the theme of which was “the gospel.” I highly recommend your listening to all of them. The sessions include:

“What is the Gospel?” from 1 Cor 15:1-8
“The Gospel as the Believer’s Motivation” from Phil 1:12-16
“The Gospel and God’s Justice” from Col 2:13-15
“The Gospel [...]

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A Casual Post Script to “Response to Aaron Blumer” [by Greg Stiekes]

The following article, again written by Pastor Greg Stiekes, is a “casual post script” to the article I posted by him yesterday. In it Pastor Stiekes responds to comments here by Brian McCrorie and Kevin Mungons (a.k.a. “Kevin 3″), as well as a comment made by “Pastor Joe Roof” at Sharperiron.org.
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“Biblical Kid Times”: A Response to Aaron Blumer [by Greg Stiekes]

This article is by Pastor Greg Stiekes (bio below) in response to Aaron Blumer’s recent Sharperiron.org article, “Why Churches Should Have ‘Kid Times’.”“Biblical Kid Times”: A Response to Aaron Blumer
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Foreword
When the FBFI published their resolution denouncing the Integrated Church Movement (ICM), I e-mailed Pastor David Smith, who drafted the [...]

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Richard Weaver on culture

Richard Weaver said,
It should be more widely appreciated that culture is an intermediary between man and his highest vocation, which in some form or other is a matter of the spirit. but it is not the nature of the mass of men to be spiritual at every moment in the saint’s way. Part of their [...]

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The church assembles for worship, part 2

Last week I offered an initial argument that believers gather for worship. In part 1, I discussed the significance of the phrase, “house of God” as applied to the church in the New Testament, that it points to assembled believers as the place of God’s special presence, the “new temple/tabernacle” for those in Christ Jesus. [...]

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